The Manifesto's "againstness"
From the reading "The Poetics of the Manifesto : Nowness and Newness," I conclude that it is easier to say what the manifesto does, than to define the manifesto. In this reading, I have counted twenty-five adjectives (seventeen on two pages) that are used to describe what the manifesto has become. These adjectives connote the extreme. They indicate that the manifesto is designed to manipulate, to convince and to convert. It can take either an institutional or an individual and independent stance, and it promotes a "we" against "them" attitude toward an issue.
The manifesto places emphasis on appeal, and on the vision of the producer, and his ability/power to persuade. This makes me somewhat uncomfortable with this genre, and so I question :
1. How much credence should one give to the manifesto?
2. Is it usually more self-serving than representative?
3. Is there a tension between principle and the manifesto?
Please let me hear your views.
posted by emjay @ 9:14 AM
2 Comments:
I agree that the manifesto is definitely self- serving to some extent. In my manifesto I will definitely address topics that are close and personal but they are in effect also there to serve a greater good. If the manifesto addresses a large group that is in need of change, for example the board of ed., then the manifesto serves many.
I hear your questions about the manifesto. I like a good rant (as Professor Tougaw calls it), and find it can actually be quite cathartic. But is it always effective, or is something lost in the choice of genre? I enjoyed Valerie Solanas' piece, for example, and I think I was able to cull from her manifesto her feelings about women and their status in society. But did her message get lost in her call for the death of all men? Of course I don't believe she is really advocating that--nor did I believe Jonathan Swift was truly calling for the eating of babies. But "A Modest Proposal" was a satire, and was to be taken as such; Solanas was writing a manifesto. Were her serious concerns lost in the method through which she chose to present them? What if the readers' response to the way in which some of these are written causes them to overlook a substantive thesis buried in the hyperbole?
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